Some people say it's foolish to worry about soulless creatures overtaking the earth and devouring our brains.
I say they've already won.

Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

WTF Is Wrong With These People

The willful mendacity of the GOP is getting alarming. It's not just that politicians lie - or more usually bend the truth. Sure, you cite the study that agrees with you while ignoring the four that don't. I get that. Standard rhetoric.

But the modern GOP, led by Prevaricator in Chief Mitt Romney, have basically divorced themselves from objective reality.

Let's build on Scalia's hyperbolic rant discussed yesterday. John Kyl recently blamed Obama for not supporting an immigration reform bill as Senator. Except, of course, Obama DID support that bill.

Kyl filibustered it.

Yet, he thinks nothing of saying the EXACT OPPOSITE of objective truth and basically pays no price for it. (I know he's retiring, but he's still in the Senate GOP leadership.)

Next, we have the Fast and Furious nonsense. Darrell Issa, Lord Chief Inquisitor of the Nut House, has subscribed to the idea that Fast and Furious - initiated by the Bush Administration - is in fact an Obama plot to take away guns from Americans by giving them to Messicans.

Just go read the litany of crap you have to believe in order to buy into that theory.

I realize a lot of this is just political gamesmanship.

Gamesmanship...

That's a term British sports announcers use for cheating. I remember watching a South African rugby player head-butting another and the color guy calling it "gamesmanship". The only control for gamesmanship is the referee. And unfortunately for the U.S. system of government, the referee is the political press.

While sites like "PolitiFact" were a nice start, they have inevitably degenerated into the usual "both sides do it" trope that allows them to claim they are "objective". For instance, the Democratic claim that the Ryan plan will "end Medicare as we know it" is ruled the lie of the year, even though the truth of that claim is really how you define "as we know it". Even in their explanation, they note that the Ryan plan would end Medicare as a single-payer system. Which is how Medicare is currently known to function.

Our only hope this year is that Mitt Romney is both an unabashed liar and personally unpopular with those who get to know him. Maybe, just maybe, the press will point out that when Romney makes demonstrably false statements that those statements are demonstrably false.

But I'm not holding my breath.

UPDATE: This is awesome. I didn't think I could be anymore attracted to Soledad O'Brien...